Dani Couture

Cloud cover like a badly made bed, ruched in sections, rushed. Whatevered for reasons of a lifetime of do-overs. Why bother trying to change? The gathered duvet sometimes mimics you, makes double. Dopples a decoy. An escape plan. The safety of numbers and cover. When the wing dips, a hole in the sky revealed. Until then, a man in the aisle seat. Calculations to see if it’s possible to slide through the fisheye window if he touches your thigh again, your face. We like our planes fashioned after ships. The illusion one could jump or be forced off and possibly survive between the distance and everything that wants to live how it’s always lived. Without compromise. When does knowing a person begin? Was it when he said you look like his ex-wife? Hair naturally red, not like yours. Fake. He can tell, but it’s OK. What your children together would look like. That if you had been born in Fayetteville, he would’ve liked to have known you. Feels he does. Not like the absent husband his mind weds you to. The one who abandoned you to his company like a firing squad to its post waiting for a reason to prove worth. The moment he asked for vodka on the 53-minute flight from Charlotte to Wilmington to bridge the gap between pre- and post-flight beers. Or how he lifted his shirt to show you where his lungs had been punctured and once collapsed, he said he’d briefly died and now is, briefly, alive.